(12-06-2016 06:39 PM)Metazoa Zeke Wrote: The problem is that if you take guns, you aren't going to stop shootings. Criminals aren't going to give up guns if they were made illegal.

Making rape illegal didnt stop a certain guy from raping. Making murder illegal doesnt stop all the murderes who are sitting in the jails of the country with the highest inmate/population ratio in the world.

According to your theory, we shouldnt even try to stop rapists and murderers, because we will never catch them all. Dont you see how utterly irrational this argument is?

Sorry, usually i am staying away from these gun-law discussions, because guns are clearly even a worse problem than religion in the USA, because seemingly even more people stick to even more silly beliefs for even worse reasons. But this kind of nonsense makes me so mad.

But unlike religion, as long as the americans keep killing each i dont have to be as worried as having a batshit crazy fundie POTUS. *sarcasm OFF*

If people dont see that guns and the average persons ease of access to them are the root cause of the high number of gun related deaths in this country, then i dont see a reason even to begin arguing with (people like) you.

It really makes me sad when i see even dozens of children, yes children shot by crazy gunmen, and people still stand up and find excuses. Once again, just like the bible and slavery. Its insane.

On the other hand i agree with Vosur. If there is indeed more than 300mio firearms, then its maybe too late anyway.

In my opinion, I think you, (and maybe your quoted poster) may have misconstrued what those laws are for.

Rules are meant to be broken. The point of the rules or, Laws, is that you have the society enforce them - it's the right to prosecute. The Rapist is going to Rape, the Murderer is going to Murder, but in a society that actually states that they have laws against those things is a society that is saying "We can't stop you from making a choice, but know that if you make a certain choice that we feel is immoral? We have the right to persecute you and judge you in a Court of Law. We have the right to Punish you."
Enforcing Laws are really what makes a civilization. Laws on their own don't prevent shit, it's the punishment that does. It's kind'a the same analogy about falling. It's not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop. Ergo, it's not the Law that stops criminals, it's the fear of their enforcement that does.

The only real way to curb such issues is by admitting to ourselves what the root cause really is, and it's the culture itself. The lack of education, fundamentalism getting special treatment, corporate leaders being as capitalist as possible and wanting guns to sell no matter what - both parties - Rep and Dem - are guilty. Both represent a dire need to be reformed or at least scrutinized. Both are poison to this society.

If it's the sudden stop of a fall that kills you, if it's the consequence of breaking a law that enforces said law, then clearly it's not the Gun that murders, it's the Murderer.

I'm sure all of us could agree that heavy regulation is needed, but I feel it's high time to communicate that simply just blaming guns for this is a coward's way of not looking at the facts, nor the reality of what REALLY is to blame - our current culture. By simply blaming guns, you're letting those who're really responsible get away with it. You're letting them bury this under the carpet so that 2 months or more from now - they'll do it again because they will know you've already forgotten.

-msg from ISIS "Yes, keep blaming the guns you pussies! We get you to do that enough, maybe some day you'll start blaming Bomb Vests and IEDs for killing people instead of us terrorists! HAHAHA!"

(13-06-2016 02:33 AM)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I don't think culture is to blame. Culture, after all, is created by humans.

I think the propensity for violence lies deep in our evolutionary past, Culture, in my view, is simply a regulatiry overlay that some folks imbibe better than others.

A violent culture is, then, merely a symptom of a mass of people unwilling or unable to accept the common good as an internal value.

A violent culture is, then, merely a symptom of a mass of people unwilling or unable to accept the common good as an internal value.

That in of itself, is a culture. As humans, we have the ability to morph our culture. No other animal we know have has culture, it takes a special intellect to achieve such a system. Here's a few definitions of "Culture"

Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
•Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
•Culture is communication, communication is culture.
•Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning.
•A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
•Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group's skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.
•Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action.
•Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation.
•Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.

One Culture in America is the strong Conservatism Culture that feels it is superior to the Liberal Culture because it chooses to support Gun Ownership above all else when it comes to gun related violence. Any regulation to this culture is considered an infringement on one's rights and their freedoms. They consider themselves superior to Liberals because they feel their defense of Freedom surpasses the Liberal view of Humanitarianism, a view that requires sacrifice of certain freedoms in most cases. Conservatives feel their superiority even lies in morality, arguing that their tradition values and fundamentalist beliefs give them a benefit of a moral campus and go so much as to claim that Liberal views are why such atrocities such as Hitler and Stalin even occurred.
Like wise, Liberalism is a culture that demands that there's a sense of duty and empathy that requires sacrifice of freedoms to happen in order to achieve maximum Humanitarian achievement. They argue that in a modern society, civilization must relinquish traditional views that are no longer totally applicable in this new world climate where education and information is far more wide spread. They consider themselves superior to Conservative Culture - sometimes being so blunt as to say they're simply smarter and more educated.

Mankind has the ability to create cultures and mold them. Unlike other animals, our sentience goes far beyond instinctual drive. We're so self aware, that we can even identify and admit, and even ignore by sheer will power, our own instincts. That's very unique. That's why culture is a big deal and why I think we need to start question our current ones. It's time to evolve them. They're clearly not working out.

(13-06-2016 01:49 AM)Heatheness Wrote: People are violent.
You want to stop the violence... cure the people.

Guns are just tools.

I don't see anyone having six fits about addressing the cause of the violence, only the end results. Guns are not the cause, they are only the tool. The reason we continue to go round and round on this same issue every time someone kills a bunch of people is because anti-gun people want an easy fix of remove the tools. That's not a fix, it's just a distraction and a lazy one at that.

When you decide to address the fix, curing the violence, I'll listen, until then, no.

Unless we are able to -magically- and totally change the attitude of whole societies towards violence and its tools until tomorrow, adressing the issue by the common tool used is the way to go in the short run. Should we all wait two more generations and watch people getting butchered while education of our children and grandchildren is kicking in (or maybe not)?

I am not saying "ban all guns tomorrow", i dont have a magic grail solution as well, but first step to adressing a problem is to admit that it exists and the insight that you cant afford to keep going on like that (or if you do/can, in this case the discussion is over). In societies like ours, the very availiablity of guns like in the US is part of the problem, and im am confident there are measures to at least improve the situation. Just sitting there and just arguing against any measure, because it may not be the holy grail will not save a single life either. Doing nothing rather makes us complicit in those killings.

Parts of the gun law discussion seems to revolve about looking for reasons to do nothing than to look for measures to actually save lifes.

As someone who has to do with field returns on a regular basis i say its insane to (just) wait until you have measures to adress the problem in the long run. You also need stop-gap solutions and short term solutions until your "cure" for the root cause is getting into effect. If our controllers fail, cars can burn or become uncontrollable on the highway. When the customer approaches us with the problem he usually wants two things (plus a bonus 3rd).

1) A risk evaluation and a short term solution to deal with the problem now if the risk is too high. They cant afford to get more people killed while being asked why they dont act at all.
If the risk evaluation results in acceptable risk, its ok, but we dont expect them to bitch around either in case of the next car accident.

2) Identification of the root cause. Measure to remove the problem at this root, backed up with evidence. Introduction of the fix.

3) Lessons learned, so we may figure out other, similar problems, that we arent even aware of at the moment.

of course i am fully aware that a law alone does nothing. Only a law enforced makes sense at all. Like a fire alarm without extinguishers (or fire brigade) is worhtless.
When i speak of laws then i am speaking of laws that are enforced. Thats why i had to chuckle when i read someone posts "he had a license to carry the gun, but not concealed!". If i was a potential mass-murderer going ballistic, it would be my least concern if a paper says "you can own that rifle, but please, pretty please, dont carry it concealed".

Yet we all know that even the most draconic laws dont work 100%. Hence the admission that whateve we want to implement, the yardstick shouldnt be "does it remove the problem completely", but rather a risk-reward calculation.

I see i am already getting involed in things that i dont wanna participate in. Im out again, sorry, please carry on.

The problem is that if you take guns, you aren't going to stop shootings. Criminals aren't going to give up guns if they were made illegal. The problem is also that it isn't guns in the first place. There are various factors when it comes to gun violence. I can agree that we should try to make gun policies the best we can, but taking guns is not the solution, nor is blaming them.

That's why you give police the guns in 2016. Hostage and violent situations(because of the said criminals with easy access to guns) are always handled by swat teams; not armed vigilantes. Why?

The idea that armed civilians help reduce gun violence is debunked every other month right here in the US.

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning ~ Werner Heisenberg

(13-06-2016 01:49 AM)Heatheness Wrote: People are violent.
You want to stop the violence... cure the people.

Guns are just tools.

I don't see anyone having six fits about addressing the cause of the violence, only the end results. Guns are not the cause, they are only the tool. The reason we continue to go round and round on this same issue every time someone kills a bunch of people is because anti-gun people want an easy fix of remove the tools. That's not a fix, it's just a distraction and a lazy one at that.

When you decide to address the fix, curing the violence, I'll listen, until then, no.

Unless we are able to -magically- and totally change the attitude of whole societies towards violence and its tools until tomorrow, adressing the issue by the common tool used is the way to go in the short run. Should we all wait two more generations and watch people getting butchered while education of our children and grandchildren is kicking in (or maybe not)?

I am not saying "ban all guns tomorrow", i dont have a magic grail solution as well, but first step to adressing a problem is to admit that it exists and the insight that you cant afford to keep going on like that (or if you do/can, in this case the discussion is over). In societies like ours, the very availiablity of guns like in the US is part of the problem, and im am confident there are measures to at least improve the situation. Just sitting there and just arguing against any measure, because it may not be the holy grail will not save a single life either. Doing nothing rather makes us complicit in those killings.

Parts of the gun law discussion seems to revolve about looking for reasons to do nothing than to look for measures to actually save lifes.

As someone who has to do with field returns on a regular basis i say its insane to (just) wait until you have measures to adress the problem in the long run. You also need stop-gap solutions and short term solutions until your "cure" for the root cause is getting into effect. If our controllers fail, cars can burn or become uncontrollable on the highway. When the customer approaches us with the problem he usually wants two things (plus a bonus 3rd).

1) A risk evaluation and a short term solution to deal with the problem now if the risk is too high. They cant afford to get more people killed while being asked why they dont act at all.
If the risk evaluation results in acceptable risk, its ok, but we dont expect them to bitch around either in case of the next car accident.

2) Identification of the root cause. Measure to remove the problem at this root, backed up with evidence. Introduction of the fix.

3) Lessons learned, so we may figure out other, similar problems, that we arent even aware of at the moment.

No, we are and have been and will continue to ignore the real problem of violence in our society because it's too hard, too massive and too expensive. I am unwilling to address anything but real solutions. I am willing to take the risk that it could happen to me and mine rather than take unworkable and unreasonable action to address it in an unworkable and unreasonable manor.

Laws are on the books right now that do not protect from these events. That is because are not followed, they are not used and until they are and we know they actually don't work, I see no need to add more laws to be ignored or cherry-picked on what will be followed.

Like any disease, address the cause and you will begin to cure the disease. It won't happen tomorrow, nothing will happen tomorrow but it will begin to make a difference. Or we can continue to have that 1000th ban the gun convo again and again and again. How's that working for you now?

(12-06-2016 06:45 PM)Momsurroundedbyboys Wrote: I'm tired of people saying that if we have gun control, only criminals will have them.

Because criminals will adhere to the new laws and give up their guns without issue like civilians would? See the issue? Gun control would disarm civilians and leave criminals with the upper hand. It's like disarming a military on enemy territory and expecting the enemy to not attack. There is no other way that could go.

Only way it'd work is if you first stop guns from being imported and moved illegally, then work on disarming criminals then disarm civilians.

"If you keep trying to better yourself that's enough for me. We don't decide which hand we are dealt in life, but we make the decision to play it or fold it" - Nishi Karano Kaze

(12-06-2016 06:39 PM)Metazoa Zeke Wrote: The problem is that if you take guns, you aren't going to stop shootings. Criminals aren't going to give up guns if they were made illegal. The problem is also that it isn't guns in the first place. There are various factors when it comes to gun violence. I can agree that we should try to make gun policies the best we can, but taking guns is not the solution, nor is blaming them.

That's why you give police the guns in 2016. Hostage and violent situations(because of the said criminals with easy access to guns) are always handled by swat teams; not armed vigilantes. Why?

The idea that armed civilians help reduce gun violence is debunked every other month right here in the US.

I've met a couple of people who shot and killed their assailants -- and were never charged, as it was justifiable self defense.

Guess what -- those assailants never re-offended.

That lowered the crime rate, right there.....

.......................................

The difference between prayer and masturbation - is when a guy is through masturbating - he has something to show for his efforts.